When he joined A. Lange & Söhne as director of product development in 2004, Anthony de Haas made building a striking watch a primary goal. “One thing was missing, and that was the fact that we were not making striking watches—no sonneries, no minute repeaters,” he says. “There was no knowhow.” De Haas, who had worked on grande sonneries and minute repeaters at the renowned specialty house Renaud et Papi, changed that with the introduction of 2013’s Grand Complication, featuring a grande sonnerie, petite sonnerie, and minute repeater, in addition to a perpetual calendar and monopusher split-seconds chronograph with flying seconds. “The object was to start where our grandfathers had stopped and continue,” he says. “That was the beginning of a new era at A. Lange & Söhne—the era of striking watches.”

Now available in the U.S., Breitling’s Emergency II, with next–generation emergency beacon technology, could have come from Q’s British Secret Service laboratory. Introduced in 2013 and only recently approved by the FCC for U.S. sales, the new Emergency incorporates a second transmitter to pinpoint your location for search and rescue teams.

“Skeleton watches have evolved to more contemporary executions, stepping away from the traditional designs and more into clean bridges that expand the empty part of the movements as much a possible,” says Guido Terreni, managing director of Bulgari Watches.

For the first time since it launched its limited edition Métiers d’Art collection, Vacheron Constantin dedicated this year’s series to the fairer sex. The Métiers d’Art Florilège trilogy presents three designs, each referencing a beautifully rendered botanical illustration from Robert John Thornton’s The Temple of Flora, published in 1799. The reference book, featuring artwork by the top botanical illustrators and painters of the time, remains a valued reference even more than two centuries later. Three of the book’s 90 plates—the strelitzia, the white lily, and the China Limodoron—have been reproduced on watch dials using the ancient decorative crafts of enameling, guilloché engraving, and gem setting. Vacheron Constantin will produce 20 pieces of each variation with round diamonds, plus another five pieces, designated for Vacheron Constantin boutiques, set with baguette diamonds. Along with its in-house team of craftspeople, Vacheron Constantin commissioned independent artisan Anita Porchet, who is regarded as Switzerland’s most revered enamellist. Porchet signs each dial with her initials.

At the 63rd Berlinale International Film Festival last February, film critics showered praise on Juliette Binoche and Paulina García for their performances, while off-screen, event sponsor Glashütte Original debuted its new leading lady, the Pavonina watch collection. German celebrities including Iris Berben, Natalia Wörner, and Katarina Witt attended Pavonina’s premiere on February 11 at the Direktorenhaus, a historic building that was transformed into a hip event venue for Berlin’s design and art scene.

Girard-Perregaux’s Le Corbusier Trilogy pays tribute to the pioneer of modern architecture and design who shares the brand’s hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Three Vintage 1945 watches—each limited to five pieces—are named for La Chaux-de-Fonds, Paris, and Marseille, all significant cities in Le Corbusier’s personal history. The designs draw upon the work and aesthetic principles of the famed architect who was a contemporary of Mies Van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

When Audemars Piguet unveiled the first Royal Oak at the Baselworld fair in 1972, the late Gerald Genta’s visionary design met with consternation. “It was a bit of a shock for the establishment,” explains the brand’s design director, Octavio Garcia, who references the watch’s massive size, integrated bracelet, sporty sensibility, and extra-flat profile. “On top of all that, it was made of steel and finished like a noble material.” It was also royally priced. The brand expected the model to be a limited edition of a few hundred pieces, but the Italian market quickly embraced the modern design, others followed, and it was put into production. This year, the brand’s flagship collection celebrates its 40th anniversary with eight new models and a commemorative exhibition that will run from March 21 through 24, 2012, in New York City, after which it will travel to Milan, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. Audemars tapped artists Sebastien Leon Agneessens, Quayola, and Dan Holdsworth to create an original Royal Oak experience using design, photography, sound, and film to transport visitors to the home of Audemars Piguet in Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux, the country’s haute horlogerie capital. The diplay will showcase dozens of significant Royal Oaks, including the one that started it all: The Jumbo.

“The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure,” declared Maurits Cornelis Escher, the celebrated 20th-century Dutch graphic artist. Escher’s enigmatic prints often bend the conventional rules of visual perception with mirror imagery and repetitive interlocking motifs known as tessellations. In its ongoing pursuit to advance watchmaking’s centuries-old métiers d’art for the modern era, Geneva watchmaker Vacheron Constantin approached the Escher Foundation and gained the rights to reinterpret Escher’s works for its latest Métiers d’Art series, Les Univers Infinis.

What’s this? Has Max Büsser gone conventional on us? Today’s launch of the LM1, the first MB&F Legacy Machine, took the watch world by surprise not with its radical timekeeping vision, but rather with its traditional, round case. Following the sci-fi HM4 and HM3, expectations were no doubt pinned on yet an even more fantastical contraption. Not this time, responded Büsser, who decided to directly reference watchmaking history instead of conjuring up another futuristic machine. His impetus for the new piece arose from thinking more about time travel à la Jules Verne rather than space travel à la Battlestar Galactica. He asked himself what kind of watch would he create if he were born 100 years earlier in 1867 rather than in 1967. Naturally, a round pocket watch was the inspirational starting point. But, while the LM1 pays tribute to watchmaking’s golden age of invention from 1780 to 1870, it still breaks some rules so as not to disappoint MB&F’s renegade fans.

Designer watch brands often eschew substance for style, but at Dior, haute couture and haute horology beautifully reinforce each other. Perhaps no other collection expresses the essence of Dior’s fashionable approach to mechanical watchmaking than this year’s Dior VIII Grand Bal, a special series within the slick new black ceramic Dior VIII collection. Five different designs each represent a fabric or decorative technique used in couture fashion.